Photo by Linda N.
Linda got this raised bed kit from naturalyards.com. I find it interesting because if you look carefully at the lower corner you’ll find a pin sticking out of the wood and I assume that these pins are holding all the planks together in each of the raised bed corners. It’s probably metal pins of some sort. I also find it interesting because you would be able to make one by yourself because of the neat way the planks are joined in the corners. A cut has been made in the end of each plank and you could easily drill the holes yourself. Furthermore it would be easy to replace one of the planks if it deteriorated. It looks like the planks in the sides are joined in the same way. The raised bed is stabilized at the middle with two metal rods from one side to the other.

Photo by mazaletel.
These raised beds are deeper than normal and excellent for root vegetables. The trellis for plants looks nice and matches the raised bed. It would work great as a trellis for peas for example.

Photo by Linda N.
I still dream about building my own raised beds from cinder blocks instead of wood since the blocks will last for a lifetime with no maintenance. The disadvantages are that the cinder block pricing is higher than the wood pricing, and the weight of cinder block is bigger. Usually you plant something in the holes inside the cinder blocks too but in this case the top has been covered with smaller concrete edging blocks, and it looks nice. The trellis to the left is for cucumbers or beans.

(If you’re looking for trellis design plans you should check out my ebook called Bean Trellis Tips, that I’ll send you for free if you sign up for my newsletter in the sidebar to the right. There’s a bunch of DIY trellis pictures in it, to get ideas from.)

Photo by boboroshi.
This is a seriously deep raised bed with nice details on top of each pole. My guess is that the owner has problems with rodents hence the chicken wire along the edges, which ought to keep them from building nests in the bed and eating the root vegetables.

Photo by cogdogblog.
Here’s a combination of natural sandstone and cinder blocks to form a raised garden bed. The holes in the cinder blocks will be used for flowers to attract pollinators. The bed has been fenced off with chicken wire, probably to keep rabbits and other animals out.

Photo by Simply Vicki.
I like these beds because they’re simple to make. Big, raw planks – beautiful.

Photo by jeffmason.
You can also use smaller raw planks and just use two instead of one plank.

Photo by Baugher Webmaster Services.
Square Foot Garden (SFG) in a simple raised bed, with peas, radishes, yellow squash and Geisha Girl flowers.

Photo by JoePhoto.
Many people put down a layer of wet cardboard under their new raised bed. I believe it’s some kind of weed stopper to get your raised bed off to a quick start on top of the lawn. Or on top of whatever plants or weeds were there in the first place.

Photo by nickton.
I just had to add this one because it’s a beauty. I’m not sure if the wood has changed color because it got wet or if this is the natural color. After all, it is covered in hail, in March. Notice the planks on top of the edges which means that you can do the weeding while you’re sitting down on top of the raised bed.

Photo by treesftf.
These people really mean it when they say raised bed – what a comfortable working position! Your back will be grateful. This particular bed is for seedlings only so the bed sides are only half the height of a normal growing bed.

Photo by treesftf.
Who told you that you needed to go buy materials for a raised bed? Pft… Just go old school, with some sticks and large leaves and what have you. Although it has a perfect working height the bed was actually raised to protect the vegetables from leaf cutter ants.

Photo by treesftf.
This is how it all started: When you loosen the soil it will expand in volume and the vegetables will grow faster, bigger and longer. Unless you walk on the soil again, like the kid in the middle of the picture… whoops

A wooden frame around the bed is just to keep the loose soil contained.

(The students are from Rafaela Herrera.)

Photo by JAGwired.
Yeah, why not? Wonder what the kids would say if they found out? And they probably will, since this is a driveway salsa garden, with tomato and pepper plants.

Photo by styro.
Flowers out – vegetables in! Way to go Watch out for tomato thieves though. You have to admire the courage these people have to put vegetables right in front of the neighbors. “That’s not how we normally do things around here.” … and who told you normal is good, you stubborn…

Photo by mazaletel.
A few PVC pipes arched over your raised bed, covered with 4 mm plastic – and you have yourself a high yielding poly-tunnel. (shown to the right, in the back.)

Photo by Baugher Webmaster Services.
When you grow peas you don’t want the birds to eat them before you do, but a floating row cover will prevent just that.

Photo by espring4224.
What a cool way to keep the birds out Indeed cool, since the wind will blow right through the cover. Remember to let the bees in and out though to take care of pollination. Not optimized for a post peak oil world but a creative solution nonetheless.

Photo by USFS Region 5.
No special raised bed designs in this photo, but it just got to me. Handing over the kitchen gardening knowledge first hand to the next generation, helping the kids grow strong and prepared for the new world. Using raised beds for vegetable gardens might be an old trick, but it’s worth knowing about and hopefully we can keep improving the method to provide us with even more of that wonderful high quality food we deserve as human beings.

I decided to grow my beloved potatoes anyway and incidentally I found these Maris Peer seed potatoes at the local nursery:

I don’t think people normally grow this potato variety around here but I recognized the name from forums so I decided to try them out.

Normally I’m chitting potatoes for a couple of weeks. When you do potato chitting make sure the shoots don’t grow too long or they’re likely to break off during planting:

I bought three cheap plastic pots for this purpose – notice the 16 drainage holes in the bottom:

These holes will let the water pass through the soil and prevent rot in tubers and roots caused by water standing still. This will of course mean that you’ll have to water more often. Especially if you use pre-fertilized peat moss like I did, which in hindsight probably wasn’t the best choice:

My new small container garden two months ago – this is a trade-off between space to play on for the kids versus growing space for kitchen gardening:

From the left there are three ceramic containers with new small blueberry bushes, in the middle are my three potato containers / pots, and the two large tubs in the back to the right are for herbs and spices. In the front to the right are three fruit bushes which we donated to the kindergarten.

The potatoes grew big but some of the foliage turned yellow so I decided it was time to harvest the tubers. I would have liked to see flowers develop before harvesting but for some reason they didn’t. Maybe the plants needed some kind of nutrient which would also explain the yellow leaves:

Fortunately the potato tubers were in there, looking healthy!:

I was very happy to find 1.2 kilos of potatoes (2.6 pounds) in those three plastic pots:

The last couple of years we have made the same simple potato salad from our new potatoes.

600 g boiled new potatoes, marinated in these ingredients:

• 1 tsp. garlic, chopped
• 3 Tbls. olive oil
• 1 Tbls. sesame oil
• 3 Tbls. lemon juice
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
• (2-3 spring onions, sliced) (didn’t use it this time though)
• 2 Tbls. sesame seeds as garnish

Yum!

What’s your favorite potato variety? And feel free to add more simple potato recipes you might have, that you want to recommend to others.

The red plastic plate under the lid is just for ventilation to provide oxygen for the seed germination process. I’m using 2 and 3 inch black plastic net pots (5 cm and 7.5 cm) for the aquaponics system, and I’m sowing directly into the net pots:

There are very few nutrients in the coconut fiber material so when the seedlings develop their first true leaves I move them into the aquaponic plant tank where the water is filled with nutrients. This is a good thing about an aquaponics system; you don’t have to replant your seedlings with risk of damaging the roots.

In the beginning I kept a journal of everything I sowed with a serial number on every pot, but it takes a long time to update and since I haven’t got that many different plants in the system I can usually see right away what type of plant I’m dealing with when the seedlings appear, so I won’t be updating the journal anymore. I’ll just focus my energy on getting a truckload of plants through the system instead

The fish in the aquarium connected to the plant tank are thriving. The interior of the tank is beginning to look like a natural environment, although we’re experiencing some really nasty looking algae, with a green synthetic like color. (If you know something about algae classification, please leave a comment below this blog post).

Fish tank and algae pictures:

But the fish seem to be okay with their artificial environment and fortunately they’re algae eating fish.

They’re pumping out fry, actually the third litter in one month. These are some of the blue acara fry, out of a litter of about 200(!):

The plants in the plant tank are doing well too. This is flat leaved parsley stretching for the grow light:

This strawberry plant did provide us with a few strawberries, and sent out a runner which I replanted in a new pot, but then it started to wilt:

I don’t know what happened – I’m sure I gave it enough water. (Get it?… enough water – in the aquaponics system?… Oh I crack myself up sometimes).

But then there’s the chives:

These are the workhorses in the system at the moment, with really long roots, and lots of them.

Note that both the strawberry plants and the chives are from the nursery where they were started in soil, which makes it hard to transfer to an aquaponics system, but we had to get some plants into the plant tank to clean the water for the fish as they where going into the aquarium no matter what. Or, at least Charlotte had a very good opportunity to buy tropical fish of the type she wanted at that particular time.

Both runner and bush beans are growing fast when they are plugged into the aquaponics system:

This is a bush bean type – runner beans are not practical in this particular system as the growing height above the plant tank is limited to 50 cm (20”) because the plant tank is placed just below the ceiling. I’m expecting a good yield from the bush beans and I’m looking forward to seeing the results. It seems like they are growing really well and we haven’t even done any adjustments of the pH value yet.

I can’t help dreaming about a nice big backyard aquaponics system, but after all it’s probably wise to get the basics right before scaling up the system.

(found it on sacramentogardening.blogspot.com…)

This ebook on how to grow tomatoes is written by Lucia Grimmer and Annette Welsford. Lucia has a Masters Degree in Plant Pathology and works as a technical nutrition specialist in the fertilizer industry. Annette has a partial degree in Horticulture. For me as an amateur grower this puts some weight behind the 37,000 words on the 73 pages. I paid $34.90 + $8.72 VAT to get the ebook in .pdf format down on my PC. You can get the ebook here: How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

It’s a very comprehensive book with many details so I’ll limit myself and only talk about the things that were new to me.

Definitions

A term I often see when reading about tomatoes is determinate versus indeterminate. In the book there’s a good clarification of what this means:

• Determinate types are the low ones, up to 1 meter. The tomatoes are picked over a few weeks in a concentrated crop.
• Indeterminates grow up to 5 meters and are picked over 12 to 20 weeks.
• Semi-determinates grow up to 2 meters and are picked over 2 to 6 weeks.

Water

There’s a lot of information on watering in the book but some things stood out to me because I realized that I have probably made a huge mistake earlier on with my tomatoes, and potatoes for that matter.

To water correctly you need to soak to a depth of 15-20 cm. So far so good. But you need to do it early in the morning, and only the soil must be watered. No water on the leaves, for God’s sake. If the leaves do get wet it’ll dry off during the day. That’s why you should water in the morning. The problem with wet leaves is that it will be a heaven for fungus and disease spores. If you have read about my 2010 tomato disaster you’ll know what I’m talking about. Drip irrigation, mulching to prevent soil splashing, and water in the morning. That’s the way to do it.

Reproduction

Pollination is still a confusing subject to me. I don’t know if it gets any clearer but apparently tomatoes are self-pollinating according to the book, because the flowers contain both the male and female organs. At least it’s beginning to make sense to me, why a heirloom variety can stay with one grower for a lifetime without outside DNA material. But then again, you wouldn’t want that with humans, right? Weaknesses would build up, but I guess tomatoes can handle that somehow.

And a good tip on propagation: Save your clippings and dip them in a seaweed solution or plant hormone powder. Then plant them in a pot, and you’ll soon have en new tomato plant. That’s easy

Fruits

The advice on the actual tomato fruits goes against what I believed you should do, but the authors recommend picking the fruit before they even have the right color. Thereby the plant will focus its energy on the remaining fruits. Makes sense. The picked fruits should be kept away from sunlight or they’ll overheat and ripen unevenly. Makes sense too. Green tomatoes should be placed in a warm location to ripen at 18 – 21 C (64 – 70 F).

Tips & Tricks

• One way to plant out your tomato seedlings earlier in the season is to use a ‘wall of water’. It’s a device with several vertical tubes filled with water surrounding each pot. The water absorbs heat during the day and releases it during the night.
• The book also has a tip on compost that’s new to me: Earthworms hate onions. So keep onion scraps out of the compost.
• If you use red plastic as mulch on the soil below your plants they’ll think they’re overcrowded and grow even more. I think it has something to do with the color of the fruits?
• In an organic garden you should consider using neem oil / margosa oil if you want to actively fight pests. It has been used in India for a long time against almost any type of insect.
• A greenhouse made from polyethylene has several advantages: Low cost, ease of replacement, high light transmission and good heat retention. I didn’t like the artificial look, but with all these advantages it’s quite interesting compared to traditional glass.

What I LIKE about How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

• It comforting to know that even the experts from the industry agree that the quality of supermarket tomatoes is very low these days (no flavour, few varieties, hard as apples).
• A chapter about biodynamic growing is included.
• Quote: “The advent of Genetically Modified Food is a revolutionary change to our food that offers no nutritional improvement, but increases the profitability and market power of global seed and chemical companies. Changes include incorporation of pesticides and weedicides within the DNA of the plant. If the ingredients and chemicals were properly labeled, like our processed food, some might be defined as pesticides!” Oh? And we’re supposed to eat that?…
• It comes with a huge online variety database
• The book covers the whole world and considers different growing conditions depending on location.
• Great info on heirloom versus hybrids.
• Easy to read and understand.
• Thorough nutrition problem key to use if you find sick looking plants, so that you can diagnose and treat the problems.
• Includes organic bug killing recipes.

What I DON’T like about How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

• Some of the text on the illustrations is unreadable.
• It’s important with references but I prefer to have all of them in the last chapter and not ind the middle of the book.
• Pictures and charts should have a higher resolution in the .pdf version.
• The book mentions that drowned snails can be tossed into the compost heap. I don’t think that would be a good idea as they would attract slugs that would eat the dead ones. At least that’s what Arion lusitanicus would do.

Who should buy How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

It’s a very comprehensive book and a lot of the information is not directly related to tomatoes but of course if you’re serious about growing tomatoes you would need to know all of that too. And the specifics about tomatoes are in there too, so if you want to build a business around growing tomatoes you’re all set. A complete beginner could probably do with half the price, half the number of pages and half the details. The fertilizing scheme alone makes my head spin, despite the fact that I’ve already grown almost 10 kilos of tomatoes.

I doubt I’ll ever need another book on tomato growing so if you serious, knock yourself out and buy this one. If you haven’t grown a single red one yet you could probably do with less.

You can get the ebook here: How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

Photo by Liz (perspicacious.org).

The concrete blocks will stay in place for many years but unfortunately they take up more space in your kitchen garden due to the thick wall each raised bed will have.

Not to worry – take a look at these neat beds made from concrete slabs:

Photo by Jennifer Rafieyan.

The walls are thin but just as durable as wooden walls would be, and concrete can’t rot like wood can.

Normally the length of a raised bed would be longer than the width of the bed (oblong) but the one in the picture might work just as well. It’s important that you’re able to reach the middle of the bed without standing on the soil and thereby compressing it. The plants love a loose soil.

Another nice thing about the setup above is that you can use the same type of concrete slabs for walking aisles as you use for raised bed walls. Then you won’t need to worry about weeding your pathways, plus your shoes will be free of dirt when you go pick some fresh vegetables in the pouring rain.

A month later the potato plant reached the grow light 1 m (3 ft) above the soil but at the same time the plant began tilting to the side:

Sometimes it would straighten itself back up only to fall over again later.

Since the much anticipated flowers never developed and the plant started to look weak, plus the lower leaves turned yellow, I decided it was time to harvest any potential potato tubers. When I grow potatoes outdoors in the spring I wait until flowers have developed before I start digging up early potatoes.

Unfortunately this is what I found:

Only the original potato tuber. Hmm. I guess it’s not as simple as that to grow potatoes indoors.

I expect that the plant was given too much light. I was really generous in the beginning – full light from 6 AM to 11 PM (though later only 8 AM to 9 PM). I suspect that the plant grew too big too fast to handle it’s own weight. Also, I’ve heard that the light outdoors changes through the season and the plants see this as a signal to start flowering. I didn’t change the light at all.

I actually did two experiments and the first as described above was definitely the one I expected the most of. I didn’t pay much attention to the other one but the result was actually a bit better.

This other tuber was planted even before I moved to this house, so it traveled along on the moving van (Gee, I’m turning into a plant geek ) The pot was left beneath a windowsill and as the days went by the plant climbed up behind the curtain to reach some light. I didn’t water it much and in time it just wilted down:

But look at the stem:

Small green tubers! At first I thought it was potato fruits but somehow the plant developed tubers above the surface and actually two small yellow ones below the surface:

Which is kind of sad My deliberate attempt failed and by accident I grew potatoes in the pot I forgot about. Hmm…

I don’t think much have changed regarding gardening techniques – the instructions in the video could just as well be used today. But the battle for victory is different as I see it. It’s still a battle, but it’s for your health. Growing your own food is just healthy. Plain and simple. Exercise, sunshine, vitamins. It reminds me why I even bother writing this blog, but what it all boils down to is preventing muscle atrophy and depression and avoiding fast food.

Although the quality of the video is poor it still moves me. Young people doing meaningful work in the field – exercise, sunshine, vitamins. They even work with a horse in the garden. I can’t remember the last time I even touched a horse. (… no, Jim, not in that way.) Completely disconnected from nature. I think it’s unhealthy and dissatisfying. Look at the amount of vegs they pull from that ½ acre (2000 m2)!

In the video they talk about:

• Early vs. late crop
• Crop rotation
• Fighting pests (with some nasty looking spraying I doubt would be legal today )
• Crazy over-sized swiss chard (what IS that?)

And remember what grandpa said:

No work – no garden. Get what that means. No work – no spuds. No work – no turnip, no tank, no flying fortress, NO victory. Bear that in mind, all you victory gardeners, and work – for VICTORY!

… Your good health, that is.

After a thorough hoeing the stem is covered with dirt:

Hopefully this will encourage the plant to develop more tubers below the surface.

Fast forward 3 days and now the plant looks like this so it’s really growing fast now:

and after another round of hoeing the stem is covered again:

It wouldn’t be practical to put on more dirt now so I’ll leave the plant alone now until it’s time to harvest the new tubers. The foliage looks healthy, with a dark green color and I’m getting excited to see the result.

Maybe I’ll experiment with pollination later on to see if I can get the plant to produce potato seeds for next year, but for now it would be great if I could just get some tubers some time in January.

Early potatoes… Well, exactly how early is that? I mean, early potatoes are from this year, right? So in theory the earliest potatoes one could get would be from January 1. I haven’t got a garden patch and there’s snow everywhere, but I do have a bucket, a big bag o’ peat moss and a turbo charged grow light – Let’s do it!

I drilled three holes in a 10 liter (2.6 gallon) plastic bucket. Those are for drainage:

Three pieces of support to keep the bucket separated from the bowl in order to let the water flow freely:

The bowl will be used for capillary watering:

A big bag o’ peat moss:

I have no idea if this is good enough for potatoes but let’s find out:

The potato tuber with small shoots is placed near the bottom of the bucket with a small layer of peat moss beneath it. The plan is to add more peat moss as the plant grows tall and thereby encourage it to develop more tubers. I’m going to do this by making sure that there’s always only a short stalk with leaves above the dirt until I can’t fill any more dirt into the bucket. Then the potato plant can grow to normal size. A bit like normal outdoor hoeing of potato plants.

Bucket and bowl placed under the grow light:

Water has been poured into the bowl for the peat moss to absorb through the holes in the bottom of the bucket.

Ready, set, GROW!